Harlem Globetrotters Take Over NYC Subway

Dante A. Ciampaglia |
October 14th 2014, 4:00 pm

New Yorkers are used to seeing some stuff on the subways. Mariachi bands. Pop-up theater. Breakdancers. Ghostbusters. Rats. But on Friday, commuters on the 7 train (which runs from Times Square to Citi Field and Queens) got an unexpected surprise: the Harlem Globetrotters.

Nine members of the team boarded the train at Mets-Willets Point, the next-to-last stop on the Queens end of the 7 line, and proceeded to do some cool basketball tricks on the platform and then the train. Fortunately, this was all captured on video and uploaded to YouTube today:

This video is pretty great. But for anyone who has ever ridden a NYC subway, it’s funny to note how, at the beginning of the clip, most people just ignore the Globetrotters. If you ride the subway enough, you get conditioned to not pay attention to people doing weird things on the train. But then, as the riders realize what’s up, they get into it and the 7 train — which is usually a drag — becomes a party. Only the Globetrotters could pull that off!